BurlingtonGreen holds third spot in a national contest with $100,000 available.

 

 

September 10th, 2013

By Pepper Parr

BURLINGTON, ON.  BurlingtonGreen got themselves selected as one of five organizations that would be part of the Jamieson Vitamins  Call for the Wild contest that had  a fund of $100,000 that would be distributed to the five contestants based on the number of people they could get to vote for them on a Facebook page Jamieson had set up.

BurlingtonGreen Executive Director Amy Schnurr with the bike Mountain Equipment Coop donated to the drive to get votes to win as much of the Jamieson Vitamins Call for the Wild Contest. There was $100,000 to be divided between five organizations.

The objective was to get people – anyone and everyone –  to go to the web site and vote.  The organization that pushed the most people to vote for them – would walk away with most of the prize money.

This is where BurlingtonGreen stood early September 10th.

Despite adding a $1000 bike as an additional draw, courtesy of Mountain Equipment Coop, it looks at this point as if BurlingtonGreen is going to place third and see about $12,000 – which in itself is not bad.

I think the city felt BurlingtonGreen would soar to the top of the list and stay there because of its membership base.  Heck this is the city that shuts down roads so the Jefferson Salamander can cross during its breeding season.

This is the city that spent $2 million in legal fees to prevent the expansion of the Nelson Aggregate quarry on Colling Road.  We were a natural to come out on top of a contest that would put funds into an organization that everyone believes is a great group of people – doing the right thing.

Right?

The numbers shown so far don’t reflect that perception.

BurlingtonGreen is up against some pretty impressive groups.  The Vancouver Aquarium in British Columbia, the Calgary Wild Life Rehab organization, the McGill University Bird Observatory and the Nova Scotia   Hope For Wildlife

BurlingtonGreen, on its website urge their members to get out their vote saying “we are currently in third place in Jamieson’s Call for the Wild! contest.  However, we are barely holding onto this position and we know we need a big surge of votes every day this week if we are going to hang onto this spot .

The number of votes in the early days was pretty low but BG Executive Director Amy Schnurr felt that once the students were back in school there would be a significant uptick – there wasn’t.

Students are a large part of the BurlingtonGreen operation. They do the grunt work during their CleanUp-GreenUp campaign and they are on site for many city festivals cleaning up. Has this students cohort translated into clout for Burlington Green – both at city hall and within the community?

Burlington Green has a strong presence in the schools of this city – and one would have hoped those students would take the message home and get the Moms and Dads and the extended family at the keyboard.

The Burlington Lions Optimists Minor Hockey Association (BLOMHA) got into one of these contests and they pulled in $20,000 for their organization on the Kraft Game Goes on contest.  BLOMHA had kids voting while in vans on the way to hockey games.  They passed out flyers and turned over every stone they could find to get the vote out.

Is hockey a bigger draw than the environment?  For the sake of the planet we hope not.

This was the contest – it looks like BurlingtonGreen can hold third.

Contest begins 12:01 a.m. Monday August 19th,  2013 and closes 11:59 p.m. September 15, 2013.

Voting is a two part process that is clearly explained on the BurlingtonGreen website.

You can vote once every day – more than once if you use different email addresses when you register your vote.

Jamieson Vitamins is a vitamin and natural health product company that has been in business since 1922.

 

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